Carnassial

Encyclopedia : C : CA : CAR : Carnassial

Carnassials are large teeth found in carnivorous mammals, designed for shearing flesh and bone in a scissor-like way. In the Carnivora, the carnassials are the last upper premolar and the first lower molar, but in the prehistoric creodonts, the carnassials were further back in the jaw - first upper and second lower or second upper and third lower molars.

Carnassials are the defining characteristic of the carnivora order; that is, they are the one thing that all of the animals within the order have in common.

Carnassial teeth all have three roots.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.